I bought a box of gooseberries for the first time from the farmers market a couple of weeks ago. I've always been curious about these berries, but had never tasted one until a few weeks ago. They're kind of like a tiny, slightly tart grape, though they weren't as sour as I'd expected them to be. And they look quite pretty here, don't they?
Once I got them home, I had to decide what to do with them. I scoured my British cookbooks, since the fruit seems to be a favourite of cooks there. But since I didn't have enough for a pie or jam, I compromised and decided to make a compote, loosely adapted from the River Cottage Every Day cookbook that I borrowed from the library (highly recommended, by the way!).
The recipe itself is fairly simple: add the fruit, water and sugar to a pan and cook for about 10 minutes. Before I got to that stage though, I had to top and tail the berries. Holy hell was that an annoying task! It took me close to half an hour to take off the tiny stems and the little bits of brown at the bottom. I'm quite sure I would go nuts if I had to prepare an entire pie.
Anyway, after it was all cooked and cooled, I ended up with this -- basically a thick, jam-like concoction. I'd say I started with about a cup of fruit (or just over 280g, because I weighed them), and I added maybe 2 or 3 tablespoons of water, and maybe the same amount of sugar. The compote wasn't terribly sweet, but I liked it that way.
And yes, I realize it looks like a bowl of slightly seedy snot, but I turned it into a fool, by folding it in to whipped cream and crumbled up meringue. It only looked vaguely nasaly after that. :)
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